1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to interpretation services, and, more particularly, to a method and an apparatus for interpretation service enabling speech inputted by a user of a telephone to be converted into a foreign language and outputted in the translated form.
2. Description of the Related Art
Persons travelling abroad, or otherwise in need of an oral interpretation service, are often in need of an immediate response to speech in a face-to-face situation. However, in interpretation systems using optional speech recognition, the absence of limitations on the content of the speech, meaning the absence of limitations on the acceptable words to be spoken, often gives rise to extremely frequent errors in recognition, which hampers prompt and/or correct responses. Furthermore, when the speech is to be translated from any input language into a foreign language, mistranslation is also frequent.
For a speech input system involving a closed universe of interpretation, meaning that the required contents of the speech are known in advance, techniques are available that recognize typical expressions with high accuracy, due to the limited universe of words necessary for inclusion in the knowledge base. This limited universe leads to a increase in the predictability of the contents of the speech, and a correspondent increase in the accuracy of speech recognition. Where a closed universe recognition technique for typical spoken sentences limited to particular contents is used as an interpretation service, the difficulties of incorrect recognition and/or translation will be partially solved, but a new difficulty arises in that the statement that the user needs to have translated may not registered or known, and consequently that statement cannot be effectively translated.
Japanese Patent Application No. 65424/1997 discloses one example of a speech interpretation system using a speech recognition server and a radio mobile terminal. This speech interpretation system recognizes speech input through a telephone, converts it into a foreign language and outputs it in the translated form by using an optional speech recognition technique with no limitation on the contents of speech. However, this technique is subject to the same limitations discussed hereinabove.
Therefore, the need exists for an interpretation service that allows the user access to a plurality of translatable phrases, thereby increasing the probability that the statement will be recognized by the interpretation service, while increasing the likelihood that a particular phrase necessary to the user will be found in the universe of translatable phrases.